This guy clearly is doing a lot of work to put these together. They all have a nice amount of information, not just about the team and it's history, but about the country.
He rightfully describes kimchi as 'pungent,' and says this about the country:
'Modern Korea has yet to recover psychologically from the brutal Japanese occupation at the turn of the 20th Century and the partitioning of an already small country by the Korean War (1950-53).'Spot on there. He just has one small flaw. He says that Korea's K-League -- the professional soccer league -- is the biggest sport here. He says it used to be baseball, but since the World Cup was held here and in Japan in 2002, the K-League rules.
Well, he must've visited the country directly after the World Cup, when soccer was on everyone's minds. While it's still very popular here, people don't think about it that much when it's not World Cup time, and they definitely don't pack the stadiums. Baseball is still king in Korea.
Of course, the sport of the moment will be on top no matter what. That's how clones think.
Anyway, he gives the Taeguk Warriors a 20% chance of advancing out of their group. They're with Argentina, Nigeria and Greece. Argentina is basically a lock, and Nigeria is playing close to home. Greece has been a mess lately, but did win Euro 2004, shocking the soccer world.
The big game, in my opinion, is their game against Nigeria. The winner of that game should advance as the second place team from the group.
6 comments:
Agree with you that the big game is Nigeria. I'm confident SK will come out on top though. Nigeria were poor in the African Cup of Nations, and they don't carry enough of an attacking threat.
Don't agree with you about baseball though! I definitely think football is still more popular - but we might just have to agree to disagree :)
As for the article itself, there's a lot I find patronising and just plain wrong about it. No doubt a lot of effort's gone into it, but still:
"[The Korean language] bears no roots to any other known spoken language on the planet." - Most likely wrong. Sure, there's some debate, but I would say the most authoritative scholars say it has a few relatives.
"Korean food incorporates flourishes of French, sauce-based cooking (perhaps imported from Vietnam)." It does? Now, we've all eaten plenty of Korean food in our time, but French? Really? From Vietnam? When, how and why? This seems quite unlikely to me!
"The Korean press corps following the team is a several-hundred strong gaggle with an unquenchable thirst to ask the same questions over and over to anyone they can get their hands on. They are single-minded: if you seem to be at all familiar with the sport of soccer, a Korean national will invariably ask you for your opinion on their team, regardless of the setting or situation." - In my experience this is also just wrong. Korean football journalists are some of the few Korean journos who seem to be genuinely passionate about what they write about. And they are incredibly knowledgeable. These guys spend their lives watching the game and reading about it. Also, I find that Koreans are more likely to ask you about teams from your own country than your opinion on theirs.
"Unfortunately, their team isn't great." - Matter of opinion :)
Anyways, I do think the South Koreans have a good chance in a tough group. They're not going to be pushovers. I was at the recent friendly with Ecuador which they won, and I have an extensive writeup of it here:
http://koreanfootball.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/south-korea-ecuador-star-performance-ki-sung-yeung/
Thanks for the link to the Ecuador friendly write-up! I'm with you that a lot of what that guy said was certainly balogna. I was reading it thinking it was half a joke. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it to be a little off.
It's a shame, I actually had a spare ticket for the match - I just didn't know I did! Otherwise you could have come along - assuming you didn't get to see it anyway?
Oh man. That would've been legendary. I didn't even get to watch the game. Too busy salsa dancing. Haha.
It was a really good game, and like I wrote on my post, I thought some of the Korea-based players did really well.
Another great win today against Japan as well. I think this is probably the strongest squad SK has ever had going into a World Cup. Just a shame there's no Hiddink this time around!
Well, a shame for Korea. Hiddink is a magician. I wish he was coaching the US. Haha.
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